Not much it seems. I feel like this week I’ve been running around to doctor’s appointments and cutting off loose ends. I really don’t have much to show for myself. Even my commissioned item hasn’t progressed very far.

Oh, the pattern is written and that’s a big thing but the knitting is slow going. It’s in brown which you know slows me down to begin with. I’d probably fall over dead if one of these zines ever sent me red, or even orange to knit with. I know, I know, it doesn’t photograph well. I can whine and wish though, can’t I?

I have some Club yarn that I can show off now. I’ve seen some people have already received and spun there’s.

The color was blue, white, yellow, and green. - DANDY LION. Get it? To me, Dandelions mean spring. I had to include white in there prominently because you can’t forget making the first wish of the season when you blow the fluffy seeds away.

Scary right. I hope some of you didn’t fall or anything when reading that. What the heck would possess me to say something so outlandish? No more coffee? Obviously I’ve hit a new level of insanity. I feel like I have.

For the past 6 months or so I’ve been battling with chest pains. In January they got so bad that I went to the doctor. I was hooked up to all the machines. I could have sworn I was going to die by chest implosion. She said I was fine and sent me home with some blood work to do. A week later, there was no doubt in my mind that my chest was indeed going to implode so I went back to visit my doctor.

This time she told me she thought I had heartburn. Heartburn? Seriously? Doctor you have to be shitting me? There is no way heartburn is going to cause such an explosion in my chest. I got the look from her that let me know I was being a ridiculous baby and that obviously I had no clue what heartburn was. Indeed I’ve had lots of heartburn in my time. Never had it tried to implode me. I was informed it could be a hiatal hernia, heartburn, GERD, Acid reflux, etc etc. Any one of those, or some combination. Here take these pills and stop being a baby.

Normally I hate to take pills without knowing what is wrong but at that point I really just wanted the pain to go away. It was getting hard to function. So I’ve been taking the pills as faithfully as my scattered little brain will allow. I just picked up one of those pill organizers so maybe I’ll be able to remember if I took my meds or not.

The coffee banishment…
Last week, I forgot to take a pill. I didn’t realize I forgot to take a pill until the next day when I had my morning cup of coffee. I drank half the cup and all of a sudden my chest started to implode again. Coffee bad. Right then and there, I realized I needed to say good bye to the coffee. I almost threw the cup across the room. I remembered that I like the mug so I simply poured out the coffee, cleaned the mug and made myself a pot of tea.

 **edit** it’s not the caffeine that gets me, it’s the acid in the coffee.  Plain and simple, there is too much acid in regular or decaf coffee.  It’s like drinking a cup of vinegar, which is another story for another day.  Decaf is just an insult. It’s not as good as regular and it still makes me hurt.  Sadly, coffee is out as a daily good morning.

I told that long story to give you a tutorial.
Yes, I know a bunch of you skipped the boring story to get to the pictures.

Now that I’m drinking tea I needed a cozy to help keep the pot warm. I needed the cozy now. I’m far to impatient to just knit one. Not when a pile of winter hats is staring at me from the corner. I’m using this opportunity to give a hat a summer life and I’ll get to make myselfa new hat next year. All pictures can be enlarged with a click.

Teapot and hat to be transformed (Fake isle hat)

I stretched the hat over the teapot. My very scientific way of seeing how it will fit.

While the hat is still on the pot, I start to pick up stitches and crochet a single chain around where I want the cut to be for the handle. Basically this is just doing a crochet steek technique. Make sure if you are using a fair isle item that you ar grabbing the carried yarn in with your steek so you don’t end up losing stitches when you cut. You can also sew and then crochet your edge if you are being really careful.

Then I cut!
I fit the hat onto the teapot again and do the crochet and cut steps for the spout.

It sort of fits. The bottom is too long and I want it to be felted anyway. Into the washer it goes.

All done!
The longest part of this was the washing machine filling with hot water. It was excruciating. I’m that impatient. Now I have a prettly little teapot cozy. The poor thing has a little Grizzly Adams thing going on and will need a bit of a haircut at some point. For now it’s just happy to be sitting on my little teapot.

The air was tons warmer over the weekend. The giant snow banks are gone and the sun is working at melting the rest of it. This is the time of year that gets me really excited thinking about hot weather and hot weather food. I made iced tea and a big pot of pasta salad. My idea with the pasta salad was to make it like my Mom’s but Vegan and GF friendly. Her pasta salad features egg which I replaced with tofu. Normally I would have crumbled the tofu but it makes it hard for the baby creature to eat so in my version I cubed it.

PASTA SALAD
Brown Rice noodles (I like rotini) - you need about 4-6 ounces.
1/4 cup Red onions - chopped
1/4 cup of a Green vegetable - ideas - Peas, chopped asparagus, broccoli
1/2 package Tofu - crumbled or cubed if you have baby creatures.
Amounts of the following vary to taste:
Dijon mustard**
Nayonaise**
ginger, S&P, soy sauce, corriander

** If you you can get the vegan version of Dinonaise it’s awesome and perfoct for dishes like this.

Cook the noodles. Cooking brown rice noodles is a little tricky. If you over cook them, they’re not just a little limp like regular noodles, they become slimey and rather gross. Follow the directions on the package, or time them. I put mine in for 7 minutes. Rememeber, they continue to cook after you drain them unless you drop them into cold water. While doing that, saute the onions and then the Tofu with it. Season with a bit of soy sauce, ginger, and corriander.

Then combine everything.
Put them in a big bowl and take them to your picnic. This is one of those dishes that is well suited to being served at room temperature.

I’ve started a new knitting project. I’ll have to save that for later. I need to go open the shop now.

There is craziness abounding here at the Boogie house. Well, most of the craziness is normal.

I got accepted into the MA SHEEP AND WOOL. I haven’t heard back from anyone else. you can’t assume that they’ll let you into the same show year after year. If Fiber Frolic does let me in, that’s only 2 weeks from MA Sheep and wool. I know it seems crazy but I’m starting to plan for it. I hate working like a dog the last week before the show. Ok, there’s no fooling, I probably still will be. I always want to see how packed I can make my booth. It’s liek some sort of crazy contest with myself. How much color can be crammed into one booth. I try to top myself each time.

This week I’ve been trying to get out club. Club really does take up a ton of my time. There are over 100 of you, and while that’s peanuts on the STR scale, it’s huge for me. Thank knit for my Mom’s help. I think I would have had to have placed a cutoff number if I didn’t have help.

I have been knitting on this:

I can’t give away too much. I have an article coming out in the Knittyspin Summer edition. This little item will be going along with thet article, but you won’t see it until Knittyspin Fall edition. I know, such a tease. I want to get this little number done quickly in the hopes that I have time to wear it before the weather gets too warm.

I’ve also been working on the sweater for my Mom

I ripped and reknit- it’s coming out much better now and I feel more confident that the sizing is correct this time (we measured a fovored sweater that Mom wants the sweater to fit like, no more guessing, measuring a sweater really is the smart way to go).

Not to be left out are the green socks.

I won’t say the green obsession is over but I don’t feel compelled to knit on them every second fo the day. I t might have something to do with dyeing up the next batch that I want to work with. I really am going to try to finish at least one more pair before I cast on others.

The baby knows a good magazine when she sees it. She sat like that for quite some time. It almost looked like she was reading the Nana Nancy article on the last page. This isn’t the first time she’s picked up a knitting book and gotten completely into it. Cooking books and knitting books seem to fascinate her. More so than thte kids books she has. She can sit for hours flipping through knitting books. But then, can’t we all?